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Psyked *

it’s easy once you know how.

How You Can Use WordPress Functions to Run a Smarter Blog

Posted by James - 10/12/08 at 10:12:58 am

http://www.pearsonified.com/2008/05/how-to-use-wordpress-functions.php

Time for a blog refresh…

Posted by James - 09/12/08 at 07:12:30 pm

Blogsessive has a really nice post on “20 Free Corporate WordPress Themes”, over at http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tips/20-corporate-free-wordpress-themes/.

A couple of my favourates are the Modern and Corporate Sandbox, but Basic, Deadwood Lite and Natural Power also have a nice flair.  It’s been a while since my last theme update, and a few bugs have been cropping up so I thought it might be a good time to update the theme – maybe even make it something for the new year!

Modern

Continue reading Time for a blog refresh……

Erk, my contact form is broken. Time to upgrade…

Posted by James - 09/12/08 at 12:12:44 pm

Since I’m on a bit of a ‘WordPress thing’ today, I thought I’d give a mention to the new version of one of my older plugins, WP-Contact form III.  Originally developed by Ryan Duff – whose site has since closed down (creating support problems with the plugin, to say the least) the WP-Contact form plugin was easy way to add contact email functionality to a WordPress blog.

Now it seems, Doug of the Marketing Technology Blog has taken on the task of developing the WordPress Contact form plugin, adding new features and keeping everything running smoothly with the newer versions of WordPress.  

You can read all about it and download the plugin at: http://www.marketingtechblog.com/projects/wp-contactform/

Recent Posts Range Widget

Posted by James - 11/11/07 at 01:11:51 am

‘Recent Posts Range’ is an expansion of the functionality offered by the built-in WordPress Widget, ‘Recent Posts’ and allows you to specifiy a starting index for your ‘Recent Posts’ display. Why would we need this? Well, when you have a few post summaries on your homepage, it seems futile to be displaying the same links again in the sidebar, wouldn’t you agree?

With this widget, you can display some more of your older posts, without cluttering things up too much. Heck, you could even use it with the standard ‘Recent Posts’ widget to get ‘Older posts’.

Download Recent Posts Range now!

Customizable widget Features:

• WordPress 2.3 Compatable!
• Name
• Start index
• Number of posts
• Optional (on/off) Post date display
• Optional (on/off) Post exerpt display

Doesn’t feature (i.e. I can’t figure it out) :

• Post category / tag exclusions

Download Recent Posts Range now!

It’s funny where a caffeine-fuelled night will ends up.

Alexking.org – Cool WordPress Plugins

Posted by James - 27/08/07 at 10:08:06 am

If you’re sitting around, wondering what would make your WordPress just that little bit more awesome, be sure to check out the WordPress Plugins section of alexking.org.  What can I say?  The plugins are all geared towards adding that little extra bit of style and usability to your site.  I’m going to be incorporating them into Psyked over the next week or so – so I’d certainly reccomend them!

404 pages – Welcome Smashing Magaziners!

Posted by James - 19/08/07 at 09:08:16 pm

Right up-top there in the usability stakes is the fact that you should always give your visitors what they want.  That’s tough, especially when the page they end up with is “Error 404″.  I’m not going to go off on a rant about what you can do, but what I do is thanks to a few neat WordPress Plugins.Basically, the 404′s you’ll see on Psyked contain a few elements – A search box, related links, top categories and top posts.

Search box, that’s easy, it’s inbuilt into most themes.  Top categories and posts are thanks to the plugins “Most popular categories by posts“and “WP-PostViews“.  Related links is an impressive plugin, “Related Posts” – there’s a version specifically for 404 pages.

Have a look at the result…

Figuring out WordPress

Posted by James - 26/05/07 at 12:05:01 pm

WordPress is very flexible, as I’m sure you’d guess. But how exactly can you get the best of it, from a coding point-of-view?

The danger with WordPress, of course, is that’d you’d just create yet-another WordPress Blog. Default settings, popular plugins, familiar layout. Undoubtably they all have their merits, but you’d be nievé to think there wasn’t room for improvement. So, here’s me, trying to improve on the WordPress standards. A little more thought into the information given on a per-page basis, for example. Or different layouts, that sort of thing.
Continue reading Figuring out WordPress…